Details

CPU Clock Rate

3.4GHz

CPU Temperature While Idle

12.0° C

CPU Temperature Under Load

31.0° C

Description

My parents have been using an old pre-built computer for almost 6 years now and I wanted to use my first paycheck to buy them a new computer to use. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to build them a very high-end PC but I was hoping to get the most value out of my money and give them a good computer they could surf the web and do some office work on!

Some thoughts on why I chose this part:

CPU/APU: I chose an APU for my parents because they don't game at all and this desktop was more for general use. I want to upgrade to a quad-core APU someday for them.

Motherboard: Not too much thought went into this one. I wanted a decent mobo that was compatible with an FM2 socket due to the APU. Thus, the ASRock FM2A55M-DGS was chosen.

RAM: I was originally going to buy 8 GB of RAM but I was told that 4 gigs would be fine for what my parents did with their computer. I bought single-channel RAM so I could still upgrade it to 8GB in case they needed it!

HDD: I checked the capacity of my parents' current HDD and how much space they were using of it. They had filled up less than 100GB of it.. So I went with a 500GB HDD and I bought it from a friend used.

Case: The classic NZXT Source 210. A simple case that doesn't have too many bells and whistles but has great cable management features. My parents don't really care for LEDs or windows so this seemed like the perfect case to get them.

PSU: An awesome PSU for a computer that won't take 430 watts to power anytime soon. I have the Corsair 430M in my own computer and I love it.

Optical Drive: My parents still use CD's and not USB's so I had to get them an optical drive. This seemed like the standard when it came to optical drives so I went ahead and bought it. It runs a bit loud when it's loading a CD though, thus the 4 star rating.

OS: Bought a product key online so I only had to pay $20!

Cable Management: This is honestly probably the most fun part of building a computer for me. I love making the motherboard side of the computer look as clean as possible. This is only the second computer that I've been able to clean up the cables on so I'm still a bit new to it. Hopefully it looks pretty decent though! The computer runs quite cool though even though they won't really be putting it under too much stress anyways.

Lastly, I want to say thanks to the PCPartPicker community again! You guys were a huge help the first time I built my computer and you were still a big help this time! Hopefully my parents love their new computer!

*Upgrades: I'll probably think about getting them a better APU like an A10 or something like that. I also want to get them an SSD for them to just put their OS on it. They don't know what overclocking is so the stock cooler will probably be fine for years to come.

Great job keeping the prices low. I just built a high-end built but was wondering whether PC building could be a way to save money, coming in at prices lower than the standard ones you see at Best Buy and stuff. And at first it seemed there was no way to do it--economy of scale, controlling the supply chain, whatever, they manage to do it infuriatingly cheap, making it so someone like your parents have no reason to go with a custom build. But this is pretty cheap--though part of that's due to the $20 Windows key, which I don't really understand how you got.

I find your cabinet to be very big for this task. For this PC. It did not need to be this big because that APU hardly ever heats up. A smaller HTPC like chassis or even a MiniITX setup would have been better.

Look at the price he paid. At most he would have saved 10 dollars going for a microATX (Rosewill FBM-01 comes to mind) and most HTPC cases cost way more. Is ten dollars worth a tinier case with no cable management options? I don't think so.